福布斯：將要登上世界舞臺的中國汽車企業，是這家（深度長文）
深度長文，帶你從吉利領克（Lynk&Co）品牌開始，重新認識吉利汽車。
杭州吉利發動機測試中心控制室
When will Chinese carmakers follow the Japanese, and Korean example, and take over the world? If it happens, who will it be? Sitting at a desk overlooking a glitzy Shanghai skyline that can put Manhattan, or downtown Tokyo to shame, I predict that scrappy Geely will be at the vanguard of Chinese automakers to take on the world. I write this after having seen Geely’s R&D center in Hangzhou, after having talked to its production engineers in Geely’s hometown some three hours south of Shanghai, and after having been granted a rare glimpse behind the closed doors of the company’s design studios in Shanghai. I am rarely impressed, but I am.
什麼時候中國車企會和日韓車企一樣走向世界？如果能，又會是誰？坐在辦公桌前俯瞰上海足以讓曼哈頓和東京遜色的城際線，我預測：吉利將成為中國車企登上世界舞臺的先鋒。在參觀了杭州的吉利研發中心後，在上海以南約三小時車程的吉利新研發中心，和那裡的產品工程師交談之後，在極其難得地參觀了吉利上海設計中心以後，
“The Chinese car industry is ready to enter a new phase, and to break out of its home market,” Geely’s marketing chief, Alain Visser, told me in Shanghai. “I am confident that we will be first, but I would be very surprised if we are the only ones.”
“中國汽車產業即將進入一個新階段，即將突破國內市場的界限。”吉利首席行銷官Alain Visser在上海告訴我。“我確信吉利將是第一家，但我也會非常驚訝，如果我們是唯一一家的話。”
吉利集團首席行銷官Alain Visser 介紹 Lynk&Co品牌
Visser was marketing chief of Ford and GM in Europe before he signed up at Volvo. Geely bought Volvo in 2010 for a bargain-basement $1.5 billion from a cash-strapped Ford, when the Detroit automaker fought for post-carmageddon survival. It was one of those rare deals that worked all around. Ford came through alive, if not entirely unscathed (it also sold Jaguar Land Rover to India’s Tata, Aston Martin to private investors, and its controlling share in Mazda to Japanese banks.) Volvo was not dismantled and shipped-off to China, as many predicted. Volvo engineers were given free rein to develop technology, and they became early leaders in autonomous tech. Geely finally had a leg up on the competition. Eventually, it also had Visser as CMO of the whole group.
在簽約富豪之前，Visser是福特和通用的歐洲行銷總監。2010年，吉利以較低的15億美元的價格從資金拮据的福特手中收購了富豪。這次收購是當年並購交易中非常成功的一個。福特度過了難關（它還將捷豹路虎出售給印度塔塔集團，將阿斯頓·馬丁出售給了私人投資者，將馬自達的控股股份轉售給了日本的金融集團。）出乎很多人的預料，
The deal was especially good for Geely. Before the Volvo takeover, it made 330,000 cars a year, approximately the same number as the near-dead Volvo. Last year in 2016, Geely group sold some 1.3 million units globally, spokespeople told me in Hangzhou, where the company is headquartered. 766,000 of the cars were sold by Geely, mostly in China, with a few going to South America, Africa, and elsewhere. Volvo sold around 534,000 units globally in 2016, I was told. That volume was created, Tesla-watchers take note, with “about 20 different models,” said Geely spokesman Sumi Yang after performing a quick mental count, and after explaining that “the number changes quickly.” This year, Geely wants to sell between 1 and 1.2 million units, and it wants to reach 2 million by 2020. Volvo wants to sell another 800,000 units by 2020, Volvo boss Hakan Samuelson told The Economist. That 2.8 million target does not appear far-fetched at all. Group-wide, Geely already operates 12 factories, 9 in China, and one each in Sweden, Belgium, and England. Tesla wants to produce one million cars by 2020 in one factory in Freemont, California. Compare that to Geely, and you are beginning to have doubts with Tesla.
對吉利而言，這筆交易特別划算。收購富豪之前，吉利的產量是33萬輛，接近富豪瀕臨破產時數字。在杭州總部，吉利發言人對我說，2016年吉利集團全球銷量為130萬輛。其中吉利銷售了76.6萬輛，國內市場占了大部分，
For this year, Geely alone plans the launch of nine new models. I was shown all of them, and a few of next year, modeled in clay, after I surrendered my smartphone and signed a quite toothless NDA to gain access to Geely’s design studio, housed in a former World Expo building on the Pudong side of Shanghai.
今年，吉利計畫發佈9款新車型。吉利上海設計中心位於浦東的世博會的一個建築裡，在交出手機和簽署了保密協定後，我在這裡看到了所有車型以及計畫明年發佈的一些車型的泥模。
Peter Horbury（中）在吉利上海設計中心接待來賓
Geely’s team of 500 designers -- spread over studios in Pasadena, Calif.; Barcelona, Spain; Gothenburg, Sweden; and Shanghai -- won’t run out of work anytime soon. “The Chinese market develops so quickly that we launch a new facelift each year, and a completely new car every three,” told me Geely’s Shanghai studio chief Guy Burgoyne, a bearded Aussie who designed Holden cars before signing up with Geely in 2013. At his Shanghai Studio, some 40 projects are cooking in various stages of completion. Geely’s far-flung design operation is run by Peter Horbury, a flamboyant and outspoken Brit who endeared himself to the British media with his eminent quotability. After a few glasses at the Shanghai studio, he regaled us with war stories, like when he stated at his arrival at Volvo in 1991 that “designers are not there to make the work of engineers look prettier. Engineers are there to make our designs work.” His favorite line is that the obscenely expensive stamping tools needed to make a car, “cost the same, whether the product looks ugly, or nice.”
吉利500人的設計師團隊——分佈在美國加州帕薩迪納市、西班牙巴賽隆納、瑞典哥德堡、中國上海——不久就將在工作中馬不停蹄了。“中國市場發展速度太快，以至於我們每年都要發佈全新改款車型，每三年就要發佈全新車型。”吉利上海設計中心負責人、大鬍子的澳洲人Guy Burgoyne告訴我，2013年簽約吉利之前他曾為霍頓設計汽車。在吉利上海設計中心，40個專案正處於完工的各個階段。吉利遍佈全球的設計事務由Peter Horbury負責，作為高調而坦率的英國人，由於觀點不凡，他和英國媒體關係密切。幾杯酒過後，他向我們講了很多事兒，例如1991年他初到富豪時，“設計師不是為了讓工程師的工作看上去更好，工程師主要為了實現我們的設計而工作。”他最喜歡的是製造一輛汽車所需的極其昂貴的衝壓模具，“不管產品是好事壞，成本都是一樣的。”
At Geely, the 3D data in the CAD computers are turned into real parts by CNC machines eating trough blocks of plastic at frightening speed. The plastic parts are assembled into verification models, and subjected to the critical eyes of the designer. If a subtle detail won’t pass scrutiny, a dot sticker sends the part back to the designer’s CAD computer. Only when a car is dotless, the designs are deemed fit to be turned into the obscenely expensive stamping tools, unleashed on the production line, and finally, the populace. “Chinese cars were rightfully criticized in the past for their lack of finesse,” said Horbury, and he is making sure that this no longer applies to Geely. Geely is well on its way to an up-positioned brand that caters to what its marketers call a “newfound nationalism among younger Chinese car-buyers,” who want something else than their father’s Volkswagen, or Buick.
在吉利，CAD電腦以驚人的速度，通過數控機床處理塑膠塊使得3D資料轉變成了實體部件。這些塑膠模組被組成各種模型，然後要經過設計師挑剔眼光的審查。任何一個微小細節如果不能通過審查，一個點標會發把有問題的部分發送回設計師的CAD電腦。只有當一輛車無疑問了，設計才會轉變成昂貴的衝壓模具，被送上生產線，最後進行量產。“中國車在過去被批評不夠細膩靈動，” Horbury說，他正在確保吉利車不會這樣。吉利正在踏上品牌提升之路，以迎合被經銷商稱之為“年輕中國消費者中的新出現的民族主義”。相對於父輩的大眾或別克，年輕人想要一些新東西。
Geely has come a very long way in a very short time since it flooded the Chinese market some 15 years ago with dowdy conveyances based on technology that harkened back to a disco-era Daihatsu Charade. Geely cars now have a common, and quite pleasing design language. The underpinning technology also is a far cry from the old hand-me-down platforms that were shipped to China by global OEMs by the time the tools were already worn-out.
大約15年前剛剛進入汽車市場時，吉利憑藉的是“迪斯可時代”的技術製造低端車。但是，吉利卻在極短的時間內走了很長的路。現在吉利汽車已經有了一個穩重的、令人愉悅的設計語言。相對于被全球OEM廠商帶入中國的過時的、現成的廉價平臺，吉利的基礎技術已經不可同日而語。
吉利上海設計中心負責人Guy Burgoyne在上海車展介紹吉利新MPV
The Chinese joint venture model requires that a foreign automaker can hold not more than 50% of the shares in a Chinese operation. A Chinese automaker must own the other half of the joint venture. This is frequently decried as a ticket to steal foreign technology. Over the years, just the opposite emerged. Large Chinese automakers see no need to invest heavily into R&D, it comes in a FEDEX envelope, or via high-speed data line from Detroit, Wolfsburg, or Tokyo. The Chinese joint venture model made its automakers fat and lazy. Innovation is only learned by actively innovating, by being a part of the innovation process. Geely owns world-class automaker Volvo, allowing its engineers to be five years ahead of their colleagues at the mostly state-owned joint ventures.
中國合資企業模式要求國外汽車商在合資企業中持股不能超過50%，中方必須持有合資中的另一半。這通常被認為是竊取外國技術的模式。多年以後，事情的發展卻恰恰相反。國有大型車企不必在研發上進行大量投入，就能通過“聯邦快遞的包裹”或者高速資料線獲得來自底特律、沃爾斯夫堡或者東京的現成研發成果。合資模式使得這些企業變得肥胖和懶惰。創新，只能通過積極創新並成為創新過程的一部分才能被學到。吉利擁有世界級的車企富豪，這使得它的工程師的技術水準領先國有合資同行5年。
“One of the great things of Geely is that it’s an independent company,” says David Ancona, who heads Geely’s smallest design studio in Barcelona. “All other Chinese companies are either in bed with their foreign partners, or under too much government influence. They use second-hand platforms and second-hand drive-trains. They may have the parts, but they don’t own, or understand the technology.” Geely on the other hand invested another $10 billion into Volvo, and in the development of a state-of-the-art modular technology they call Compact Modular Architecture (CMA.) “With CMA, we have a fantastic basis,” said Ancona. “In many ways, Geely is at the level of a mainstream European manufacturer.”
“最重要的事情之一，吉利是一家獨立公司。”吉利最小的巴賽隆納設計中心的負責人 David Ancona說，“其他中國公司要麼躺在與外國合資的溫床裡，要麼受到太多政府影響。他們使用二手的平臺和二手的傳動系統。他們也許有組裝部件，但他們不擁有或者不理解技術。”另一方面，吉利另外投資了100億美元給富豪，以發展最先進的被稱為緊湊模組化體系結構（CMA）的模組化技術。“有了CMA，我們擁有了極其出色的基礎，” Ancona說，“多年以來，吉利已經達到了主流歐洲車企的水準。”
The boss of Geely’s R&D center agrees. “The CMA architectur e is very similar to MQB,” Zhengnan Hu declared, referring to Volkswagen’s trailblazing “Modularer Querbaukasten” architecture, that turned previously arcane automotive technology in something close to a household name. In one aspect, CMA is ahead of MQB. Volkswagen’s MQB demands investments into completely new production lines, CMA cars however can be built on existing lines of Volvo and Geely.
吉利研發中心負責人同意這個說法。“CMA架構非常類似MQB，”胡崢楠說，他指的是大眾開拓性的Modularer Querbaukasten架構。這個架構使得以前神秘晦澀的汽車技術在某種程度上成為家喻戶曉的名字。從某種程度上說，CMA領先於MQB。大眾的MQB需要建設全新的生產線，然而CMA汽車能夠在富豪或吉利現有的生產線上生產。
吉利研發中心，吉利工程師講解一台發動機測試台。
I heard that at a tour of Geely’s brand-new R&D center some 50 miles from Geely Headquarters at Hangzhou Bay. It opened just 5 months ago after a close to $1bln investment. 7,000 engineers work here already, while construction workers make room for another 1,000 engineers. The center houses rows and rows of engine testing stations, supplied by Austrian power-train expert AVL. In a separate building is a complete pilot production line. It does not produce cars. This is where production lines are tested, where robots and people are trained, before car manufacturing starts elsewhere in earnest. Tesla watchers take note: This is how it is done at a professional mainstream car manufacturer, and Geely definitely is one of them. While Tesla needs (but does not yet have) a separate production line for its upcoming Model 3, Geely already makes 3 models on the same old line. Soon, 12 different models will come off a new line that is being built at Geely, told me its chief of pilot production Gao Wen, who led me around sparking welding robots (the expensive kind, made by ABB) and who patiently answered any question I threw at him. The new line will have an automation degree of 80%. The times of cheap Chinese labor are over.
在離杭州吉利總部50英里外的吉利新研發中心，我得到了以上資訊。在投資近10億美元之後，新研發中心在5個月前投入使用。7000名工程師已經在這裡工作，能夠容納另外1000名工程師的辦公空間還在建設中。新研發中心擁有成排成排的由澳大利亞動力系統專家AVL提供的發動機測試工作站。另外一個大樓裡是一條完整的試生產線。它不生產車，它是車輛在被其他生產基地正式生產之前，生產線測試、機器人和人員被訓練的地方。特斯拉觀察家注意到：這些都是專業的主流汽車廠商的運作方式，吉利無疑是其中之一。當特斯拉需要（但仍然沒有擁有）為它即將來臨的Model3準備一個獨立生產線，吉利已經在現有生產線做了3個model了。很快，12個不同的model將來自吉利新建的一條全新的生產線，試生產負責人說。他帶領我參觀了焊接機器人（ABB最貴的那種）並耐心地回答我拋給他的任何問題。這條全新線自動化程度高達80%。中國依靠廉價勞動力的時代已經結束了。
Design and development play a leading role in Geely’s ultimate advantage: Its speedy time to market. Developing a new car from the ground up usually takes around 5 years, at Geely, it can be done in 3 years, or less, without cutting corners with details, quality, or testing. Engineers at the R&D Center work two shifts per day. Each new Geely car is -- on public roads, and Geely's own proving ground -- tested for some 250,000 miles before it goes into final production, Hu told me. The true reason why Toyota and Daimler invested into Tesla was to find out how Elon Musk could develop cars faster than anybody. When they found out that paying customers were used as beta testers, they quickly dumped the stock at a big profit.
設計和開發在吉利的終極優勢裡面起了重要作用：它對市場的回應時間非常快。從頭自尾開發一種新車通常需要5年時間，吉利3年或者更短時間就可以完成，並且沒有在細節、品質和測試方面投機取巧。在研發中心工作的工程師每天兩班倒。每一輛新車在最終投產前——在公路上和吉利自己的試驗場——需要測試大約25萬英里，胡崢楠告訴我。豐田和戴姆勒投資特斯拉的真正原因，是為了知道Elon Musk如何比別人更快開發汽車的。當他們發現消費者被用作beta測試員的時候，他們見好就收，迅速地拋掉了股份。
吉利在上海車展發佈了Lynk&Co品牌
Smart, and listening to hordes of Western car execs it has hired, Geely is not intent on flooding the world with cheap Geely cars. Geely will remain a brand mostly for the Chinese market, I was told. With Volvo, Geely owns an established global brand with pedigree. On top of that, Geely launches the Lynk&Co brand, a line of cars for the world, developed in Europe, and made in China. Last week in Shanghai, the brand was launched onto the Chinese market, complete with two hot offers: Lifetime warranty, and free mobile Internet bandwidth.
憑藉著智慧以及認真傾聽所聘用的大量歐美高管的聲音，吉利並不打算用“廉價”走向世界。我被告知，吉利品牌將主要用於中國市場。擁有富豪，吉利有了一個純正的國際品牌。另外，吉利發佈了面向世界的Lynk&Co品牌，這個品牌在歐洲開發、在中國製造。上周在上海，領克品牌在中國市場發佈，其中有兩個搶眼服務：終生保修和終身免費資料流程量。
I have seen many car factories during my more than three decades in the business. I have only once been let into an operating design studio, and never was I taken around a pilot production line, because both are the inner sanctums of the car business. China’s car factories usually are completely walled-off to outsiders, and especially to nosy journalists with cameras. Opening its holy of holiest to outside eyes, Geely couldn’t have demonstrated better that it is way ahead of the Chinese auto industry, and probably ahead of many carmakers in the world.
在超過30多年的汽車產業的經歷中，我已經觀察過許多汽車企業。我僅一次被允許進入運營中的設計中心，從來沒有被允許參觀試生產線，因為二者都是汽車行業最核心的機密。中國的汽車工廠通常都是完全對外人封閉的，尤其是對愛問問題帶著相機的記者。對外界開放它最神聖的地方，吉利充分地展示了它領先於中國汽車工業、或許也領先於世界汽車工業的姿態。
——原文摘錄自《福布斯》雜誌。
Peter Horbury（中）在吉利上海設計中心接待來賓
Geely’s team of 500 designers -- spread over studios in Pasadena, Calif.; Barcelona, Spain; Gothenburg, Sweden; and Shanghai -- won’t run out of work anytime soon. “The Chinese market develops so quickly that we launch a new facelift each year, and a completely new car every three,” told me Geely’s Shanghai studio chief Guy Burgoyne, a bearded Aussie who designed Holden cars before signing up with Geely in 2013. At his Shanghai Studio, some 40 projects are cooking in various stages of completion. Geely’s far-flung design operation is run by Peter Horbury, a flamboyant and outspoken Brit who endeared himself to the British media with his eminent quotability. After a few glasses at the Shanghai studio, he regaled us with war stories, like when he stated at his arrival at Volvo in 1991 that “designers are not there to make the work of engineers look prettier. Engineers are there to make our designs work.” His favorite line is that the obscenely expensive stamping tools needed to make a car, “cost the same, whether the product looks ugly, or nice.”
吉利500人的設計師團隊——分佈在美國加州帕薩迪納市、西班牙巴賽隆納、瑞典哥德堡、中國上海——不久就將在工作中馬不停蹄了。“中國市場發展速度太快，以至於我們每年都要發佈全新改款車型，每三年就要發佈全新車型。”吉利上海設計中心負責人、大鬍子的澳洲人Guy Burgoyne告訴我，2013年簽約吉利之前他曾為霍頓設計汽車。在吉利上海設計中心，40個專案正處於完工的各個階段。吉利遍佈全球的設計事務由Peter Horbury負責，作為高調而坦率的英國人，由於觀點不凡，他和英國媒體關係密切。幾杯酒過後，他向我們講了很多事兒，例如1991年他初到富豪時，“設計師不是為了讓工程師的工作看上去更好，工程師主要為了實現我們的設計而工作。”他最喜歡的是製造一輛汽車所需的極其昂貴的衝壓模具，“不管產品是好事壞，成本都是一樣的。”
At Geely, the 3D data in the CAD computers are turned into real parts by CNC machines eating trough blocks of plastic at frightening speed. The plastic parts are assembled into verification models, and subjected to the critical eyes of the designer. If a subtle detail won’t pass scrutiny, a dot sticker sends the part back to the designer’s CAD computer. Only when a car is dotless, the designs are deemed fit to be turned into the obscenely expensive stamping tools, unleashed on the production line, and finally, the populace. “Chinese cars were rightfully criticized in the past for their lack of finesse,” said Horbury, and he is making sure that this no longer applies to Geely. Geely is well on its way to an up-positioned brand that caters to what its marketers call a “newfound nationalism among younger Chinese car-buyers,” who want something else than their father’s Volkswagen, or Buick.
在吉利，CAD電腦以驚人的速度，通過數控機床處理塑膠塊使得3D資料轉變成了實體部件。這些塑膠模組被組成各種模型，然後要經過設計師挑剔眼光的審查。任何一個微小細節如果不能通過審查，一個點標會發把有問題的部分發送回設計師的CAD電腦。只有當一輛車無疑問了，設計才會轉變成昂貴的衝壓模具，被送上生產線，最後進行量產。“中國車在過去被批評不夠細膩靈動，” Horbury說，他正在確保吉利車不會這樣。吉利正在踏上品牌提升之路，以迎合被經銷商稱之為“年輕中國消費者中的新出現的民族主義”。相對於父輩的大眾或別克，年輕人想要一些新東西。
Geely has come a very long way in a very short time since it flooded the Chinese market some 15 years ago with dowdy conveyances based on technology that harkened back to a disco-era Daihatsu Charade. Geely cars now have a common, and quite pleasing design language. The underpinning technology also is a far cry from the old hand-me-down platforms that were shipped to China by global OEMs by the time the tools were already worn-out.
大約15年前剛剛進入汽車市場時，吉利憑藉的是“迪斯可時代”的技術製造低端車。但是，吉利卻在極短的時間內走了很長的路。現在吉利汽車已經有了一個穩重的、令人愉悅的設計語言。相對于被全球OEM廠商帶入中國的過時的、現成的廉價平臺，吉利的基礎技術已經不可同日而語。
吉利上海設計中心負責人Guy Burgoyne在上海車展介紹吉利新MPV
The Chinese joint venture model requires that a foreign automaker can hold not more than 50% of the shares in a Chinese operation. A Chinese automaker must own the other half of the joint venture. This is frequently decried as a ticket to steal foreign technology. Over the years, just the opposite emerged. Large Chinese automakers see no need to invest heavily into R&D, it comes in a FEDEX envelope, or via high-speed data line from Detroit, Wolfsburg, or Tokyo. The Chinese joint venture model made its automakers fat and lazy. Innovation is only learned by actively innovating, by being a part of the innovation process. Geely owns world-class automaker Volvo, allowing its engineers to be five years ahead of their colleagues at the mostly state-owned joint ventures.
中國合資企業模式要求國外汽車商在合資企業中持股不能超過50%，中方必須持有合資中的另一半。這通常被認為是竊取外國技術的模式。多年以後，事情的發展卻恰恰相反。國有大型車企不必在研發上進行大量投入，就能通過“聯邦快遞的包裹”或者高速資料線獲得來自底特律、沃爾斯夫堡或者東京的現成研發成果。合資模式使得這些企業變得肥胖和懶惰。創新，只能通過積極創新並成為創新過程的一部分才能被學到。吉利擁有世界級的車企富豪，這使得它的工程師的技術水準領先國有合資同行5年。
“One of the great things of Geely is that it’s an independent company,” says David Ancona, who heads Geely’s smallest design studio in Barcelona. “All other Chinese companies are either in bed with their foreign partners, or under too much government influence. They use second-hand platforms and second-hand drive-trains. They may have the parts, but they don’t own, or understand the technology.” Geely on the other hand invested another $10 billion into Volvo, and in the development of a state-of-the-art modular technology they call Compact Modular Architecture (CMA.) “With CMA, we have a fantastic basis,” said Ancona. “In many ways, Geely is at the level of a mainstream European manufacturer.”
“最重要的事情之一，吉利是一家獨立公司。”吉利最小的巴賽隆納設計中心的負責人 David Ancona說，“其他中國公司要麼躺在與外國合資的溫床裡，要麼受到太多政府影響。他們使用二手的平臺和二手的傳動系統。他們也許有組裝部件，但他們不擁有或者不理解技術。”另一方面，吉利另外投資了100億美元給富豪，以發展最先進的被稱為緊湊模組化體系結構（CMA）的模組化技術。“有了CMA，我們擁有了極其出色的基礎，” Ancona說，“多年以來，吉利已經達到了主流歐洲車企的水準。”
The boss of Geely’s R&D center agrees. “The CMA architectur e is very similar to MQB,” Zhengnan Hu declared, referring to Volkswagen’s trailblazing “Modularer Querbaukasten” architecture, that turned previously arcane automotive technology in something close to a household name. In one aspect, CMA is ahead of MQB. Volkswagen’s MQB demands investments into completely new production lines, CMA cars however can be built on existing lines of Volvo and Geely.
吉利研發中心負責人同意這個說法。“CMA架構非常類似MQB，”胡崢楠說，他指的是大眾開拓性的Modularer Querbaukasten架構。這個架構使得以前神秘晦澀的汽車技術在某種程度上成為家喻戶曉的名字。從某種程度上說，CMA領先於MQB。大眾的MQB需要建設全新的生產線，然而CMA汽車能夠在富豪或吉利現有的生產線上生產。
吉利研發中心，吉利工程師講解一台發動機測試台。
I heard that at a tour of Geely’s brand-new R&D center some 50 miles from Geely Headquarters at Hangzhou Bay. It opened just 5 months ago after a close to $1bln investment. 7,000 engineers work here already, while construction workers make room for another 1,000 engineers. The center houses rows and rows of engine testing stations, supplied by Austrian power-train expert AVL. In a separate building is a complete pilot production line. It does not produce cars. This is where production lines are tested, where robots and people are trained, before car manufacturing starts elsewhere in earnest. Tesla watchers take note: This is how it is done at a professional mainstream car manufacturer, and Geely definitely is one of them. While Tesla needs (but does not yet have) a separate production line for its upcoming Model 3, Geely already makes 3 models on the same old line. Soon, 12 different models will come off a new line that is being built at Geely, told me its chief of pilot production Gao Wen, who led me around sparking welding robots (the expensive kind, made by ABB) and who patiently answered any question I threw at him. The new line will have an automation degree of 80%. The times of cheap Chinese labor are over.
在離杭州吉利總部50英里外的吉利新研發中心，我得到了以上資訊。在投資近10億美元之後，新研發中心在5個月前投入使用。7000名工程師已經在這裡工作，能夠容納另外1000名工程師的辦公空間還在建設中。新研發中心擁有成排成排的由澳大利亞動力系統專家AVL提供的發動機測試工作站。另外一個大樓裡是一條完整的試生產線。它不生產車，它是車輛在被其他生產基地正式生產之前，生產線測試、機器人和人員被訓練的地方。特斯拉觀察家注意到：這些都是專業的主流汽車廠商的運作方式，吉利無疑是其中之一。當特斯拉需要（但仍然沒有擁有）為它即將來臨的Model3準備一個獨立生產線，吉利已經在現有生產線做了3個model了。很快，12個不同的model將來自吉利新建的一條全新的生產線，試生產負責人說。他帶領我參觀了焊接機器人（ABB最貴的那種）並耐心地回答我拋給他的任何問題。這條全新線自動化程度高達80%。中國依靠廉價勞動力的時代已經結束了。
Design and development play a leading role in Geely’s ultimate advantage: Its speedy time to market. Developing a new car from the ground up usually takes around 5 years, at Geely, it can be done in 3 years, or less, without cutting corners with details, quality, or testing. Engineers at the R&D Center work two shifts per day. Each new Geely car is -- on public roads, and Geely's own proving ground -- tested for some 250,000 miles before it goes into final production, Hu told me. The true reason why Toyota and Daimler invested into Tesla was to find out how Elon Musk could develop cars faster than anybody. When they found out that paying customers were used as beta testers, they quickly dumped the stock at a big profit.
設計和開發在吉利的終極優勢裡面起了重要作用：它對市場的回應時間非常快。從頭自尾開發一種新車通常需要5年時間，吉利3年或者更短時間就可以完成，並且沒有在細節、品質和測試方面投機取巧。在研發中心工作的工程師每天兩班倒。每一輛新車在最終投產前——在公路上和吉利自己的試驗場——需要測試大約25萬英里，胡崢楠告訴我。豐田和戴姆勒投資特斯拉的真正原因，是為了知道Elon Musk如何比別人更快開發汽車的。當他們發現消費者被用作beta測試員的時候，他們見好就收，迅速地拋掉了股份。
吉利在上海車展發佈了Lynk&Co品牌
Smart, and listening to hordes of Western car execs it has hired, Geely is not intent on flooding the world with cheap Geely cars. Geely will remain a brand mostly for the Chinese market, I was told. With Volvo, Geely owns an established global brand with pedigree. On top of that, Geely launches the Lynk&Co brand, a line of cars for the world, developed in Europe, and made in China. Last week in Shanghai, the brand was launched onto the Chinese market, complete with two hot offers: Lifetime warranty, and free mobile Internet bandwidth.
憑藉著智慧以及認真傾聽所聘用的大量歐美高管的聲音，吉利並不打算用“廉價”走向世界。我被告知，吉利品牌將主要用於中國市場。擁有富豪，吉利有了一個純正的國際品牌。另外，吉利發佈了面向世界的Lynk&Co品牌，這個品牌在歐洲開發、在中國製造。上周在上海，領克品牌在中國市場發佈，其中有兩個搶眼服務：終生保修和終身免費資料流程量。
I have seen many car factories during my more than three decades in the business. I have only once been let into an operating design studio, and never was I taken around a pilot production line, because both are the inner sanctums of the car business. China’s car factories usually are completely walled-off to outsiders, and especially to nosy journalists with cameras. Opening its holy of holiest to outside eyes, Geely couldn’t have demonstrated better that it is way ahead of the Chinese auto industry, and probably ahead of many carmakers in the world.
在超過30多年的汽車產業的經歷中，我已經觀察過許多汽車企業。我僅一次被允許進入運營中的設計中心，從來沒有被允許參觀試生產線，因為二者都是汽車行業最核心的機密。中國的汽車工廠通常都是完全對外人封閉的，尤其是對愛問問題帶著相機的記者。對外界開放它最神聖的地方，吉利充分地展示了它領先於中國汽車工業、或許也領先於世界汽車工業的姿態。
——原文摘錄自《福布斯》雜誌。